Willem Dafoe
Visit Shoreditch

Access Shoreditch were lucky enough to welcome a major Hollywood actor through the doors. Let us give you a clue. Does The Green Goblin mean anything to you?

That’s right, Willem Dafoe!

Pino Leoni is a freelance sound engineer and is currently studying Sound Engineering at Access Shoreditch.

‘I was really excited to work with such a great celebrity and I was really concentrating on achieving the best result I could’.

This is how he managed to bag working with the famous actor.

‘A friend of mine who is involved in post production, passed my contact details to a movie director, who was planning to record Dafoe’s voice on the English version of a documentary. I accepted the job without thinking twice and I decided to do it at the college as I was familiar with the equipment in the studio’.

The finished product is for a documentary called ‘Pigs’. It’s about the financial situation og Italy and how is considered economically weaker following the financial crisis.

Pino says, ‘we agreed to do the session in the morning around 10am, so I was there an hour before to set up the studio and check everything was working fine. It was a pretty straight foward 4 hour session, where Willem recorded his voice over the pictures that were displayed on the screen. He is a really easy going person and a great professional artist. He has been in the game for a while, so the session was smooth and easy’.

Pino has a number of other exciting projects lined up. He has recently been engineering live gigs, from international bands to local soloists and he’ll be working at Glastonbury this year!

When asked how Access has helped his career, he replied, ‘With its in-depth lessons, practice time and work experience’.

For anyone wanting a career in the sound engineering area, he says, ‘focus on what you want to achieve. Work hard for it and don’t give up. All the sacrifices pay off in the end’.